


nightmares

by randomling



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: Epitaph Verse, Gen, Nightmares, bring your own subtext
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 07:35:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomling/pseuds/randomling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most nights he barely sleeps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nightmares

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scifishipper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scifishipper/gifts).



“Topher?”

Slowly, obstinately, the fog begins to clear. He’s not sure where he is; there’s a hard floor underneath him and a thin blanket screwed up to his side. Maybe at some point it was covering him, but then again, maybe not. He doesn’t want to open his eyes.

“Topher. Topher, it’s me.”

Topher chuckles to himself, because it’s not as if he’d ever forget that voice, or the flood of memory that comes with it. It’s clipped, British, female. He only knows one person like that. “Come on, darling,” Adelle says. “Wake up.”

Her hand touches his wrist, briefly and lightly, but enough to draw Topher a little further back down into his body. His head’s a nightmare place anyway, full of butchers and dumbshows, screams and silence. He hates it there. “It’s okay,” he lies, “it’s okay, it’s okay, I’m okay.”

“Come on,” Adelle says, and Topher opens his eyes.

The light’s too bright. He squints, raising his arm to shield him. He feels Adelle before he sees her: she touches his forearm, coaxes it from his face, and pulls it around her back. He finds his face resting against her shoulder, his forehead touching the wool of her jacket, and lets himself be held.

“Did you have a nightmare?” Adelle asks.

_I’m still having it,_ Topher thinks. He says nothing.

*

After a couple of hours, Adelle coaxes him into eating some soup and drinking a little water. The worst part, Topher thinks, is that he still thinks he can _fix_ this. There’s the seed of an idea in the back of his mind. It’s still unformed, but if he could just have - just get - maybe just a _little_ time alone. A little space from the voice in his head.

It’s not really Adelle, he thinks, as his fork clatters against the side of the bowl, his hands not quite able to stop shaking. It’s not any of them. It’s not even Priya’s baby, though he still screams the place down nearly as many nights as Topher does. It’s… it’s everything.

He’s so _tired._

Adelle and Priya talk while Topher eats, but the words mostly go over his head. He thinks they’re talking about the farm: he hears them mention strawberries, summer, oranges, earth. It’s all disjointed to him. Disconnected. He’s a little cold, so he draws his knees up to his chest, hugs them.

“Topher?” Adelle says, stopping mid-sentence. He can’t do anything without her noticing.

“It doesn’t work,” he says; not to her, really. Not to anyone, not even himself. “It doesn’t work that way. Too many factors. Not enough time.”

“Topher, darling, talk to me.” Adelle is closer now, sitting on the chair beside him. She puts a hand out, but he flinches away before she manages to touch his arm. She withdraws the hand. “Okay,” she says. “What doesn’t work?”

He looks at her. “Everything,” he says.

*

The worst part is, he’s _useless._ He spends so much time tuned out, locked out, over the hills and far away. They don’t let him work in the farm, because he forgets what he’s been doing and digs out the same patch of ground, over and over and over, until his clothes are covered in dirt. He can’t chop vegetables for dinner - his hands shake too much. He can’t concentrate, can’t focus; some days it’s all he can do to sit still while Adelle spoons stew into his mouth, one bite at a time. Most nights he barely sleeps.

On good days, he makes shaky notes on whatever’s available - paper Adelle finds for him, which is rare, or the wooden floor he sleeps on. He doesn’t like his bed; he misses the Dollhouse too much, misses the nest he made. On his best days, he can understand the notes he’s made before, can see them starting to coalesce into a whole.

But those days seem to get rarer and rarer.

And in the meantime, it’s Adelle who keeps it all together. She feeds Topher when he can’t do it himself, talks him down on the nights he screams, holds him after nightmares. He likes the way she feels, the way she smells when he’s curled up against her in the middle of the night. The perfume she used to wear is gone; now she smells like earth and warmth and whatever food they managed to scrape together that day. Her hair is soft, the shoulder he rests his head on angular, her hand a small point of warmth in the middle of his back.

That night, she comes to his room, even though he’s not screaming - he’s not even really awake, but he’s in that sweet spot where the nightmares haven’t kicked in. He doesn’t move when Adelle slips her arms around him from behind.

“You should take some of the blanket,” Topher says. He doesn’t move, though, because he’s comfortable like this. Adelle presses her mouth against the back of Topher’s shoulder, gently.

“I’m not cold,” she says.

When he wakes up yelling two hours later, she’s still there.

*

The following day is almost a good day.

After his first nightmare, he sleeps fairly well. Adelle is gone by the time he wakes up, and he spends the morning feverishly making notes on a new section of wall with a piece of charcoal Adelle found him months ago. Adelle reappears after a couple of hours and forces him to eat a little food. He even drinks an entire cup of tea. Some time later, he looks up at his little window and discovers it’s almost dark outside. He gets up.

“I’m going for a walk,” he says to Adelle. She’s at the stove.

“All right, darling,” she says, without turning round. “Dinner in half an hour.”

Topher walks the length of the farm in the cool of the night, feeling a little clearer, a little calmer. He can see where Priya and Adelle have planted strawberries, and as he gets farther from the house, the sound of the baby’s cries melt away. It’s nice here. He likes the, the _ambience._

That’s a good word. He smiles to himself.

“That’s him,” a voice says. Topher turns around and gets a glimpse of a tall, broad man. _Dumbshow?_ he wonders, but that doesn’t make any sense, because - 

There’s a sudden movement, and everything goes black.


End file.
